Nurture Naturally Childcare Services (NNCS) Ltd

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff form positive relationships with all children. Children go to staff for comfort and seek them out when they are unsure of visitors. They are happy and settled in staff's care. Staff teach children to be independent learners. They encourage children to hang up their coats when they return from the outdoor area and to choose their own learning. Staff help younger children to decide what they want to play with by offering them choices. As a result, children remain engaged in their play and have a positive attitude to their learning.

Staff teach children to persevere. For example, children enthusiastically free toy penguins and polar bears from frozen ice. They use appropriate tools proficiently to hack away at the ice and chat to staff about how they are freeing them. This promotes children's sense of achievement.

Staff know children well. They complete accurate baseline assessments when children start. This allows staff to plan meaningful activities that build on what it is children need to learn next. Staff monitor children's learning and development regularly and share information with parents to continue to ensure that appropriate and challenging next steps in learning are in place for children. Children are well prepared for the next stage of their learning.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• Staff work very closely with other professionals. They support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Staff use information provided from outside agencies to create development plans for individual children. The nursery is in receipt of additional funding. Staff use this to support children in the nursery to make progress.
• Children have opportunities to develop their physical skills. For example, they join in with a dancing activity. Children listen to a variety of action songs and move their bodies in a range of ways. Staff join in dancing activities with children and demonstrate the actions. This supports children to learn to move in different ways.
• Staff successfully weave mathematics into children's activities. Staff count with younger children as they play and sing counting songs during activities. Older children learn about mathematical concepts, such as patterns. With support from staff, children 'stomp' like dinosaurs making patterns in the sand. Staff talk to children about size.
• Staff teach children about healthy and unhealthy foods and how these can affect their teeth. Children confidently explain which fruit and vegetables are healthy. As a result, children learn about making healthy choices.
• Staff encourage and praise all children's efforts. Children enjoy seeking others out to play and begin to form friendships with others. In the garden, children play ball games together, laughing in delight as they throw the ball to each other higher and higher each time. Staff support children to understand the rules of play and that they need to share resources.
• The provider prioritises staff's well-being. Staff state they are supported extremely well in their roles. The provider ensures that staff are confident in their duties and understand their responsibilities. They do this through regular team meetings, reviewing staff's reflective logs, observing their practice and providing supervision sessions. As a result, staff are knowledgeable and skilled.
• Overall, the curriculum for communication and language is good. Staff support children to develop wide vocabularies through lots of repetition and narrative in their play. Children take part in a nursery choir and sing songs in other languages. Staff introduce new words, such as 'herbivore', as children play with dinosaurs. However, on occasions, when staff converse with children, their questioning is sometimes too closed and does not fully give children the opportunity to share and recall what they know and understand.
• Parents have positive views of the nursery. They share how they feel the nursery is a loving environment for children to learn and develop. Parents are happy with the information that they receive and speak favourably about the regular updates they receive about their children's development.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• consider how questions are asked to enable children greater opportunity to share their knowledge and understanding of what they have learned.